Each advert is set in a noisy, overcrowded, dystopian near future world in which the protagonist traverses some kind of bureaucratic nightmare as they pursue adequate banking services. At the end of each advert the protagonist is magically transported to a 1980s Barclays bank were they are met by a human representative who, because of changes in fashion and a near total blandness, now appears more sinister than anything else in the advert.

”Query” features former Astronauts (1981) star Barry Rutter as Mr Paxton. His increasingly fraught attempts to get a personal loan eventually leads him to encounter a seemingly human bank manager who is actually plugged into a computer through a socket into the back of his head. The manager is played by Tony Aitken who appeared as a madman in the Blackadder II episode ”Money” (1986), and as the ”Merry Balladeer” in the closing titles for that season.